only begun their brief journey back into their sheaths, when Lia heard two distinct noises. There came the cry of a Dragon, a wonderful, well-known voice, but it was a bellow of pain rather than triumph. Grandion! And another mighty voice, bawling, Dragons, to me!
Ra’aba was on top of the palace! What? Had she heard right, her father bellowing in Dragonish?
Instinct sped her feet. Lia tore out onto the balcony, searching the skies frantically–great Islands! Her eyes bulged. How had Grandion managed to land himself in such a tangle? As she watched, the Tourmaline Dragon swept toward the Royal Palace, but a massive Green Dragon rode upon his back, gripping Grandion’s upper wings and flanks four-pawed while gnawing at his neck with his beak-like jaws. Lia realised that the bulky Green intended to force Grandion into a rough, possibly bone-shattering landing.
Backing up two steps, she bumped into Ja’al.
“Launch me with your power,” she demanded, judging Grandion’s flight path. He would pass close to the balcony, perhaps sixty feet distant.
“You must be joking–”
Lia snapped, “Now, Ja’al!”
No time to think. She broke into a dead sprint. As Lia leaped off the balcony, wind slammed into her back, propelling her like a Human arrow fired at the incoming Dragons. She thought to stab the Green in the eye. But Lia had misjudged. She smacked into the Green Dragon’s upper shoulder, right in the meat of the major flight muscle. A desperate tangling of limbs, flailing swords and an unexpected boost from both of the Dragons flapping their wings at the same time, ended up with a Human girl lying upside-down against the Green Dragon’s spine spikes.
Elegant as ever. Lia righted herself with an irritated wriggle.
Now, how much damage could a Human girl do with the equivalent of two metal toothpicks, to a hulking, hundred-foot Green Dragon with paws large enough to crush three of her at a time? Her eyes narrowed–aye! He had neck vertebrae, only they were twenty times the size of hers. Sheathing one blade, Lia danced out onto the Dragon’s neck. Time to quarry for a nerve. She slammed the blade down as hard as she could, and almost broke her wrists. Bone. But the Nuyallith blade had at least penetrated the Dragon’s scale armour, which was as much a surprise to her as it was to the Green Dragon, who unexpectedly found a Human Dragon Rider upon his back.
Get off me, you mosquito! he thundered.
The Green tried to shake his head, which was ineffective given how his fangs were stuck in Grandion’s neck. Lia stabbed twice more with the air of a butcher cutting up meat, feeling her way to the slight ridge between two neck vertebrae. With a sharp cry, she speared the blade hilt-deep.
The Green convulsed. Lia knew that most Dragon nerves and major blood vessels, even their hearts, existed in triplicate. A Dragon could lose a heart and still keep flying. But she imagined that few Dragon fangs could penetrate the narrow gap between their neck vertebrae, and certainly not with the precision of her blade. Lia hung on as her body flapped about like a tethered windroc, jerking the blade up and down and doing untold damage to the Dragon’s spinal cord. Suddenly, the wings drooped. The Dragon’s mouth slipped off Grandion’s neck.
Flaccid, the Green Dragon’s entire body weight drove the Tourmaline Dragon toward the ground.
Seeing trees whizzing by right beneath Grandion’s paws, Hualiama screamed, “Roll, Grandion!”
Her Dragon heaved himself sideways, a violent slew in the air. The Green slipped off Grandion’s spine spikes. Lia wailed as she tried to run up its neck, but the speed of the rotation was too much. She spun loose. The next instant, before she could even gasp, she collected the full weight of Grandion’s flailing tail-tip in her stomach.
“Oof!”
Lia saw black. Then the Dragon–her beautiful, deadly Dragon–whipped his tail around like a massive slingshot. Hualiama flew over the gardens she knew so well. Whap! She smacked into his paw. Grandion immediately did a second, fancy mid-air grab to catch her sword.
“Your weapon, Princess.”
“Thank you, Dragon,” she wheezed, accepting the blade. What she could see of his body was a bloodied, fire-blackened mess. A strip of membrane flapped freely from his left wing. A battle at Gi’ishior? Or the Green’s doing? She could not think about that now. Lia exclaimed, “Am I glad to see you! Ra’aba just vanished.”
“He’s up top, rallying his Dragons. Thanks for cleaning the slug off my back.” Grandion had that most disconcerting Dragon habit